Second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan was compelled to oppose an offensive remark during a trial in the Criminal Court of Appeal today.

In the beginning, the President refused his right to speak, but he changed his mind after one of the injured parties described him as “a person who poses a threat to statehood”.

“I would like to speak since this trial is being covered by the media. There are two Armenian states on the globe, and I have been the leader of both of them,” Kocharyan recalled, stating the fact that he has been the leader of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic throughout the Nagorno-Karabakh war, has authored the Declaration of Independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and has been the first president of the latter. “I have also been president of Armenia for a decade. Until my presidency, Armenia was ranked among poor countries by international organizations,” Robert Kocharyan said.

This caused uproar in the courtroom, after which the judge asked the ex-president to speak about the appeal, to which Kocharyan responded by saying that he wouldn’t speak, if there was no allegation fired at him.

His speech was followed by rounds of applause. The judge ordered to remove people disrupting the trial and declared a one-minute interval.